Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.

Review of L. w. KING'S Bab. Chron.

133

2500 BC is especially valuable for determining the nature of the
Sumerian phonetic system when it went over to the Semites, as
well as the advantage it gives for estimating progressive Sumerian
influence. The fact that the Semitic" Itar, Astoreth appears in the
inscriptions of Sargon and not in the period of Hammurabi, where
she is replaced by the Sumerian Innini (Nana), is direct evidence
of the growth of Sumerian influence 1. It is therefore a feeling of
great thankfulness to Mr. KING with which all Assyriologists greet
his books. We have again come into possession of new information
which emphasizes those gigantic scenes which were enrolled in
Asia in preparation for the Babylonian and Assyrian empires.
1. The entry of Istar as a goddess by KING in his Letters and Inscriptions III 326 is
misleading. None of these entries rest upon a spelling is-tar but are Sumerian innini.
The goddess had already been assimilated to innina in the time of Sargon, OBI
1 col. II 7.
NOTE
In closing these works upon Sumerian philology, viz. la Syntaxe
du Verbe Sumerien, Compounds Verbs, and Loan-words, all of which
have appeared in Babyloniaca, I want to state clearly, that while
1 consider the main psychological principles of this system as chose
acquise, yet any system of grammar must rest incomplete until the
phonetic elements of the language are firmly established. Further
the internal vowel-inflection of biliteral roots remains unstudied, I
mean for instance the laws which govern the choice of tug for a
noun and tig for a verb; whether age may be present and ege past,
etc. If the foregoing works shall have in any way served to emphasize the fact that the Sumerian language was the real classic tongue
of Babylonia, whose principles must be understood for accurate
translations of a large part of cuneiform literature, then this is
itself an encouraging result.
La Chenaz par Cruseilles, sept. 1907,